


When Reality Becomes Too Much to Bare, We Tell Stories

by furchte_die_schildkrote



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: (of sorts), Fix-It, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:02:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furchte_die_schildkrote/pseuds/furchte_die_schildkrote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The anniversary of the Rising came and passed. Kieren Walker lived. Amy Dyer did not. There was no Second Rising. There was no Great Reckoning. Life simply went on, and the survivors were left to pick up the pieces and make sense of what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Reality Becomes Too Much to Bare, We Tell Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlehuntress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlehuntress/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! :D

  _The thing about legend—rumors and superstitions, folklore and urban legends, internet chain letters and religious fables—is that it straddles the gap between fiction and reality. Legends are neither wholly true nor wholly false. Legend and reality are perpetually engaged in a whirling, winding dance where who is leading and who is following rapidly become indiscernible. Legend takes reality and warps it, twists it, crafts it, and when reality and legend move too far apart, legend evolves and reshapes itself to fit. Sometimes, legend is the more powerful of the two. Other times, reason and reality rule._

_There is nothing like the zombie apocalypse to restore the power of stories in their full force._

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_When the dead rise, our first instinct is to run. There is little room for curiosity during the apocalypse. We have been predicting the end of the world long enough that, when it does happen, no one really questions it._

_When the dead truly come back to life, regaining their minds and their memories and their selves, our first instinct is to wonder what brought on this hell. The living and the dead alike seek comfort in the explanations they need to hear._

Simon stared at the television. His eyes were lifeless and distant. His face sagged under some unseen weight. Even considering his condition, he was unusually gaunt.

The Undead Prophet's masked face was plastered all over the evening news that night. There had been a series of ULA attacks after an election cycle that was particularly successful for Victus. On top of the inflammatory rhetoric that had been gaining traction since the reintegration of the Undead into the general public, an especially nasty debate had broken out over whether they retained enough citizenship to be allowed to vote. Superficially, the PDS community won that particular battle. A law was passed—by a hair's width margin—reaffirming that PDS individuals who previously held British citizenship were guaranteed the right to vote. Days later, a second law was passed. It purged every name with an active death certificate from the voter's roll. Proponents argued that this was simply a common sense law that would ease the work of bureaucrats in charge of maintaining the list, with no anti-PDS motivations. All of the reintegrated PDS individuals should have submitted paperwork to reverse their death certificates, so it should have no effect on the PDS community's ability to vote. No one was fooled by the alleged bureaucratic motivations of the law, and no one was surprised when many of the Undead—up to a third, by some estimates—found themselves unable to get their paperwork properly squared away in time for the election. Protests and riots called for a new election, but ultimately, the results stuck.

A week later, seven town clerk offices throughout Britain were attacked by ULA followers doped up on Blue Oblivion. Nineteen people were killed. Six more wounded.

There were rumors that the Undead Prophet would openly claim responsibility for orchestrating the attacks.

Kieren sat in the corner of the room, pointedly concentrating on some new sketch. He had not acknowledged the news, but since the news bulletins had begun playing, his strokes became sharper, harsher, like he was drawing anger and frustration into every line.

And then the Undead Prophet's latest video began to play on the news station.

“I have a message for the living among you: this is what happens when you declare war on an entire people. Do you expect us simply to submit as you degrade us, assault us, persecute us? You wrought violence upon my people, and behold, we struck back. This time, we struck at the arms of the beast attacking us. If the assault continues, we will strike at its heart. We will not submit. We will not be silent. We will not surrender.”

It was a short message—just under a minute.

Simon turned off the television and leaned forward, letting his head hang slightly and resting the weight of his body on his legs. He stared forward with a tired, absent gaze. A heavy silence hung in the room.

Kieren broke the silence, throwing his pencil and sketchpad down on his lap. “Sometimes, I really cannot believe you were ever part of that.”

Simon turned towards Kieren, a sudden presence came over his face. It was the sort of look that made reassured whoever saw it that they matter. It was part of what had made him such an effective preacher, disciple, shepherd—whatever he had been.

He opened his mouth to answer and then hesitated. He grew silent. He looked down towards his nose while his chin tilted upwards by a hair, Kieren could see him working over his response in his head—or rather, waiting for the answer to piece itself together, watching for it to be uncovered. It had a humble, prayer-like quality—another trick that must have been useful during his time as a disciple.

He finally shifted his head down and pursed his lips a few times before answering with a shaky calm on the verge of giving way to frustration. “Sometimes, I can't believe what it has become. It shouldn't surprise me, I know. Even before he began encouraging violence, there was an anger in him—though, hell if that's not true for all of us, I suppose. He would never condemn someone for fighting back. Even when most of his teachings were about loving ourselves and each other when the rest of the world hates us, fighting back was always an extension of that.”

“How did you end up with them?” Kieren asked. Simon's role in the ULA had been an purposefully untouched minefield between the two of them, but the shock from the night's news had dampened Kieren's cautious avoidance, allowing a morbid curiosity to peak through.

“The Prophet found me. He came to me when I was in the treatment center. I had just started to wake up. The treatments were crude. Painful. They shouldn't have been painful, given the state of neurological decay, but it hurt like hell. I was the only one who had responded so far. No one knew I was there besides the doctors. I was alone. I was in pain. I was scared. I didn't know it then, but there was an anger building in me. He told me what I needed to hear: that I was not wrong, not an abomination. He told me that I had worth. He told me I was the beginning of something miraculous.”

Kieren looked Simon in the eye with a fierce resolve. “Why did you leave? And, for God's sake, please just give me the truth about it, Simon. You don't go from fucking disciple to non-believer overnight, not even after a day like that. And the way the ULA treats you now—something more happened, I know it.”

“I realized I could no longer do what was required of me.”

“But there's more to it than that,” Kieren insisted, frustration growing in his voice.

“There is,” Simon answered simply.

Kieren straightened up in his seat, physically preparing to push the subject further, and then simply slouched back. Simon would tell if Kieren pushed hard enough, and they both knew it. Kieren also knew that Simon wanted this to stay secret. Kieren sighed and threw the fight.

“Do you miss it?”

Simon smiled weakly. “Yes. I miss the feeling that I was doing something, that I was making things better. I had the privilege of helping other Redeemed see that there is beauty and grace in what we are. Guiding them from self-hatred to contentedness and acceptance was the most rewarding task I have ever done. I miss being told that the miracle that gave us life was not some divine reckoning against the world, but a chance for its salvation. I have a lot of regrets, but hearing that message is not one of them, Kieren. And neither is leaving.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_After the explanations comes the need for a narrative. Everything makes more sense in a story. Things get easier. A villain and a hero emerge. A clear progression of events emerge, each building upon its predecessor. Tragedy gains meaning. If there are gaps in the story, they are filled with what is known and familiar._

_Like all stories, the zombie apocalypse needs a beginning. Most rural countrysides insisted that their small towns were the site of where the dead first started to claw their way out of the earth._

_The thing about myths is that they answer what is unknown with what is familiar. A man who lived in Roarton all his life will not argue that the end of the world started in downtown Miami. If we are to believe all the rumors, the end of the world had approximately 1,500 points of origin, all of which were moderately populated. The truly unknown locations of the world are never where it all began. Maybe the Rising started in the back-country of the Kamchatka Peninsula, but who could tell that tale? If a dead hiker is reanimated in the middle of the isolated Russian wilderness, and no one is around to scream, “Вот! Вот, это—зомби! Прибыл конец времен,” did it really happen?_

_Like all stories, the zombie apocalypse needs a cast. Kieron Walker was not the First Risen. Amy Dyer was not the First Risen. Or maybe they both were. Statistically speaking, it is entirely possible that several of the Risen share that title. Everyone insists that they have at most a single degree of separation from the First Risen. It does not really matter._

_While not all stories need a sequel, many people were bizarrely insistent that the zombie apocalypse would have one. That has yet to be proven. There had not been a proper Second Rising. At least, nothing on the biblical scale that had been predicted by the living and the undead religious spokesmen alike._

It was late evening when Simon and Kieren heard a knock at the bungalow door. Simon shot Kieren a worried look before getting up to answer, taking a small pistol from a kitchen drawer. Kieren moved out of the line of sight from the front door.

Looking out the peephole on the door, Simon saw a young woman, her eyes a little too round and dark, her skin a little two evenly and richly colored. She was like a living doll, Simon thought, with her red curls framing a plastic-porcelain face with dark, lifeless eyes. Looking at her sent him on a hike through the uncanny valley.

“Simon, I know you're in there. Please, open up. It's Siobhan. It's me. It's _just_ me. I have a message for you—from me, not from anyone else. I can give it through the door, but I would really prefer not. I'm not here to hurt you, swear it.”

Against his better judgment, Simon opened the door. Siobhan let out a barely audible gasp, looking at him with a slight sense of awe. The hard caution on Simon's face softened into a reluctant smile when he saw her. “I almost didn't recognize you with that muck on your face, Siobhan.”

She stepped towards him, arms opening to a hug. Simon stepped back with a flinch, putting his hands out in front of him to keep a distance between the two of them. Siobhan withdrew her arms and shut the door behind her.

“Smart,” she said, her voice growing somber as the reality of their situation sunk in.

“What are you doing in Roarton?”

“Seeing you, of course. With any luck, no one knows I'm here, and if they do figure it out, I think I can pass it off as some sort of pilgrimage.”

“Why are you risking seeing me?”

“Not all of us think you're a traitor, Simon. You saved so many of us—from hatred, from despair, from God knows what. You'll have to do a lot worse to earn our hate. I have news for you, and it would not be right not to share it. Get your boyfriend too—Kieren's his name, yeah? He'll want to hear it too.”

Simon's expression hardened again. “He's not here.”

“It's about Amy Dyer. He knew her, right? They were friends.”

“He's not here,” he said again, more firmly. This time, however, Kieren stepped into view, though he held back to maintain a distance between them.

“So you're the one who led Simon astray,” she said with a playful smirk. “What an honor.” Simon looked at Kieren with worried frustration, but then turned back to Siobhan. “What about Amy?”

“Amy Dyer lives,” she said slowly, with an incredulous smile, as if she did not believe her own statement.

“Are you sure?” asked Kieren.

“How?” asked Simon.

“I could hardly believe it myself at first, but yes. It's definitely her,” she continued, with a tone that seemed as if she were trying to reassure herself as well. “We have an inside connection at a treatment facility who confirmed that Amy Dyer is alive, along with two other Undead who had been killed recently. We don't know how they are alive, but that maybe it has to do with a regenerative period they may have been experiencing. A lot of “might's” and “maybe's”, I know, but still, what we do know is amazing enough.”

Simon and Kieren simply stared forward, a stunned smile forming on Simon's face, and a look of resolve forming on Kieren's. A joyful silence danced between the three of them.

“What can we do? How do we help Amy?”

“The ULA has discussed leading a rescue party, but that would compromise our inside contact, which is not something the Prophet is willing to do yet. For now, spread the question of what is in those treatment centers however you can. Start rumors. Exaggerate. Lie. Make people wonder. Any message put out by the ULA will get framed as lies and propaganda by the living. You two have reach outside of the ULA, outside of the Redeemed. Right now, rumors are our strongest weapon.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_The thing about legend—about rumors, myths, superstitions, stories—is that it does not matter if they are true or not. They have power._


End file.
